I don't agree with the title - I've seen many engineers be rational and pragmatic about programming languages. I'm not entirely sure why the author decided to lead with such a charged headline.

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Balinares 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've seen a lot more engineers self-describe as rational and pragmatic than I've seen act like it. This here website is quite a marvelous zoological gallery in that respect. (Love you folks, you are messy complicated humans the lot of you and I wish I could cogently convey how good it is to embrace that instead of pretending elsewise.)

We do pick tools in good part based on how we feel about them (especially engineers who believe themselves beings of pure rationality, tbh), and I think that's in fact okay; how we feel doesn't come from nowhere, it's informed by decades of experience often acquired the hard way. But it's still a squishy metric that can only be trusted to a point, and being aware of how this sort of decision making occurs, in yourself and in others, is highly valuable IMO.

	▲	aj_hackman 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		90% of the time I've witnessed someone assert themselves to have some positive trait, they've espoused the complete opposite... especially when it came to morality or rationality. If someone tells you they're a logical person, they're probably highly limited in their thinking. If someone tells you they're a good person, run.

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hunterpayne 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because his first experience with this debate was forcing PHP on engineers who knew that would be a bad choice. No matter what you are doing, PHP isn't the right choice for it if more than 1 person will ever use or depend upon the software.

PS I've seen PHP destroy billions in value in my career. It and Brainfuck are the only 2 languages you should never use to make software for other people. Every other language has a core use it is good at. JS in the browser, Python for scripting, Java when you need good observability and 3rd party libraries, etc...

	▲	necovek 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've used PHP early in my career (around the time PHP 5 came about), and I was never a fan, but to claim that you can't built successful products with it is simply crazy: look at Facebook, Wordpress just to name the two! And similarly, "Python for scripting" (Instagram?)... It's the effectiveness you achieve with it that is perfect for many new projects, based on language itself (dynamism, introspectiveness, readability...) and rich standard library and ecosystem. I'd say you are not looking objectively at language choices despite the evidence being there in plain sight to counter the claims you are making.
	▲	kerblang 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Because his first experience with this debate was forcing PHP on engineers who knew that would be a bad choice Ummm... No, I think it was about forcing Perl on engineers who had been using PHP.

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wvenable 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Probably should be "management" can't be rational about programming languages because that's what it's about. The article isn't talking about a group of engineers coming together to decide on a platform, instead it's about a choice being thrust upon from from up high. That management is also an engineer but that's not really the key point.

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1718627440 3 days ago | parent [-]

Why would management care about tools?

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necovek 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

In the first example, they didn't and recruited a CTO who made a tool choice that arguably killed the business (maybe it still ends the same with PHP, minus the experience of building a nicely architected system in Perl: what-ifs all around).

Management does need to care to ensure they hire people who will make the right choices (which is a careful balancing act of investment vs returns) if they don't trust themselves to do it.

	▲	wvenable 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		CTO is management.

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hunterpayne 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly, when they do its a sign of bad management. The only case I can think of when this isn't true would be the difficulty in finding people willing to use/work in that language. But in all but the most obscure languages, this is probably given too much weight by management.

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Jtsummers 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm not entirely sure why the author decided to lead with such a charged headline.

It got people to click the link to their think piece.

	▲	esafak 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I did not. I read the comments and still found little reason to check the article.
	▲	IAmBroom 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Reason #9 will shock you!